Editorial: Survey brings home oil spill's mental aftershocks

THIS ONE’S for the skeptics who roll their eyes at the need for counseling in the wake of the BP oil spill.

A Gallup survey released Tuesday of almost 2,600 coastal residents shows that depression cases are up more than 25 percent since the oil well exploded in April. The survey appears to confirm similar findings from smaller studies, including one by Ochsner Health System, and local anecdotes by mental health workers.

The bottom line: Disasters — whether they be hurricanes or oil spills — produce "invisible" mental aftershocks that can be just as devastating to their victims as physical injuries. The phenomenon was observed after Hurricane Katrina and is now being repeated across the coastal states.

Fortunately, BP has provided $52 million for mental health care in the region, including $12 million each for Alabama and Mississippi. Providing this kind of treatment is just as necessary to making people whole as paying their claims.

The Gallup survey was conducted in 25 Gulf-front counties from Texas east to Florida over eight months before and after the spill, and ending Aug. 6. It found that 19.6 percent of people reported receiving a clinical diagnosis of depression after the spill compared with 15.6 percent before — an increase of 25.6 percent.

It also said people living along the Gulf reported feeling sad, worried and stressed, while people inland reported less during the same period. The study stopped short of concluding that the increase was tied directly to the spill.

But there are plenty of anecdotes that tie the two together. Tejuania Nelson, who runs a day-care center in Grand Bay, says she has seen new behaviors in some of her preschoolers whose parents are now jobless post-spill. "They’re throwing desks, kicking chairs," said Ms. Nelson. "It’s sad."

A counselor with AltaPointe Health Systems, hired to help people in Bayou La Batre, put it this way: "It’s like a virus that’s spreading."

In Gulfport, Miss., meanwhile, 42 percent of the patients surveyed at the Gulf Coast Mental Health Center said they were sad or depressed because of the spill.

And why not? People have lost their jobs and financial security, and, in the case of the seafood business, their way of life. Psychologists say some folks may be worried about the effects the oil has had on the environment, or perhaps they lament the loss of recreational fishing with loved ones.

When sadness turns to hopelessness, victims can shut down. Whole communities suffer. The remedy, of course, isn’t compensating people for such problems, but rather providing them with the treatment that they need to move on.

Skeptics who say mental health has no place in the recovery effort apparently haven’t met anyone who has been truly devastated. Otherwise, they’d know better.

People who lived seemingly normal lives before the oil spill are now at the breaking point. Their stories — and their plight — demand our attention.